What Do Fighting Cancer and Inducing Labour Have In Common?

When my wife was pregnant and overdue we given various advice about how to ‘get things started’ i.e. induce labour, including curry, pineapple, walking and sex. It turns out that these same thing may also be key in fighting cancer!

Curry

Can eating curry bring on labour? According to babycentre.co.uk it could do. Spicy food is often suggested as a means of bringing on labour, and many women swear by it. It’s thought that curry can stimulate your tummy and therefore also stimulate your uterus (womb), and kick-start labour. Just bear in mind that there is no evidence that it works.

What about cancer? I wrote a post recently about how curry might kill cancer and that a chemical found in curry is to be tested for its ability to kill bowel cancer tumours in patients.

Curcumin, which is found in the spice turmeric, has been linked to a range of health benefits. Studies have already shown that it can beat cancer cells grown in a laboratory and benefits have been suggested in stroke and dementia patients as well. Now a trial at hospitals in Leicester will investigating giving curcumin alongside chemotherapy drugs.

Pineapple

Babycentre.co.uk says that the enzyme bromelain found in pineapple is thought to help soften the cervix and bring on labour. Eating large amounts will probably stimulate your tummy, which could also stimulate your uterus.

Surprising Cancer-Fighting Benefits of Pineapple Enzyme

Conventional cancer treatment relies heavily on chemotherapy. Chemotherapy drugs are designed to be extremely toxic in order to kill cancer cells, but one of the biggest drawbacks to chemotherapy is the fact that it also destroys healthy cells throughout the body. This “side effect” can often lead to accelerated death, not healing.

A handful of natural compounds have been discovered, however, which exhibit an effect called “selective cytotoxicity.” This means they are able to kill cancer cells while leaving healthy cells and tissue unharmed. This type of cancer treatment is intelligent, targeted and will not result in the death of the patient from “collateral damage” in what is increasingly a failed war not against the cancer being treated, but the patient’s own irreversibly devastated body.

One such compound is bromelain, the same enzyme found in pineapple that induces labour. Research published in the journal Planta Medica found that bromelain was superior to the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorauracil in treating cancer in an animal study. What makes this impact particularly impressive is that the bromelain worked without causing additional harm to the animals!

Sex and Walking

Having sex can be tricky in late pregnancy due to the big bump, but it could trigger the release of oxytocin, a hormone which causes contractions. In addition to this, having an orgasm could also stimulate your uterus to get labour going.

As for walking, the pressure of your baby’s head pressing down on your cervix from the inside could stimulate the release of oxytocin, a hormone which causes contractions. Being upright also encourages your baby to move down onto your cervix.

How does this relate to cancer? Well, both sex and walking are forms of exercise and a report by Macmillan Cancer Support says that all patients getting cancer treatment should be told to do two and a half hours of physical exercise every week. Research shows that exercise can reduce the risk of dying from cancer and minimise the side effects of treatment.

Getting active, the report says, can help people overcome the effects of cancer and its treatments, such as fatigue and weight gain. “The evidence review shows that physical exercise does not increase fatigue during treatment, and can in fact boost energy after treatment.”

“It can also lower their chances of getting heart disease and osteoporosis.

“Also, doing recommended levels of physical activity may reduce the chance of dying from the disease. It may also help reduce the risk of the cancer coming back.”

Previous research shows that exercising to the recommended levels can reduce the risk of breast cancer recurring by 40%. For prostate cancer the risk of dying from the disease is reduced by up to 30%. Bowel cancer patients’ risk of dying from the disease can be cut by around 50% by doing around six hours of moderate physical activity a week.

Year Without Beer

Never mind the Olympics, 2012 is my Year Without Beer! I am spending all 366 days of this leap year alcohol free in an attempt to raise money for 2 charities that are both very close to my heart.

If giving up all alcohol for a year isn’t enough of a challenge to make you dig deep and show your support, maybe a quarter marathon, 10 mile road race (Great South Run) and 8 mile off road challenge (The Grim Original) will inspire you to sponsor me!

If you want to show some love them please donate to my year without beer and give your support to one of these fantastic causes:

To donate to Cancer Research UK please click here to visit my just giving page or donate by text – send AYWB66 and the amount to 70070. For example, texting “AYWB66 £5″ will donate £5.

To donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust please click here to visit my just giving page or donate by text – send AYWB55 and the amount to 70070. For example, texting “AYWB55 £5″ will donate £5.